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Wednesday, June 17, 2015

US should follow Canada’s lead and reckon with its own destructive legacy

Library and Archives Canada / Reuters

Canada confronts ‘cultural genocide’ against aboriginal people

On May 31 the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada (TRC) released a summary
of its report on the history and legacy of the nation’s residential
schools. The report concluded that Canada’s aboriginal policy, designed
“to eliminate aboriginal governments … and cause aboriginal peoples to
cease to exist as distinct legal, social, cultural, religious and racial
entities in Canada,” has caused unspeakable and enduring suffering that
amounts to “cultural genocide.”

The U.S. also had a shameful program of residential schools
for its Native American children, often operated by churches with
government funding. A reckoning for the destructive legacy of forced
assimilation is long overdue. It’s time for the U.S. to follow Canada’s
lead in establishing a truth and reconciliation commission and
acknowledge the havoc its policies have wrought.

Canada’s legacy

Started in the 1880s, the schools were funded by Canadian government
but run primarily by churches. An estimated 150,000 aboriginal children
attended the residential schools during their century-long tenure. But
the goal was never to educate the children. Instead, the schools were
designed to destroy aboriginal culture by removing children from
reservations and severing ties with parents and communities, in order to
inculcate ‘civilized’ and Christian values. The last residential school
closed in 1998, but the after-effects continue to exact a devastating
toll today. This is true not only for those haunted by their stay at the
schools but for the entire community of aboriginals whose culture and
systems of government were targeted for annihilation.
Many of the 80,000 survivors recounted their harrowing tales of
forced separation from their communities and brutal physical, sexual and
psychological abuse to the Commission. And the TRC found that more than
3,000 aboriginal children perished in the in residential schools from
abuse, neglect and illness. Justice Murray Sinclair, chair of the TRC,
estimated that the figure could be far higher, since shoddy record keeping obscured the Commission’s final accounting.
The TRC was formed as part of the 2006 Indian Residential Schools
Settlement Agreement, in the largest class-action lawsuit in Canadian
history. In 2008, Prime Minister Stephen Harper acknowledged and apologized for the harm caused by Canada’s residential schools. But he has refused to commit to implementing the Commission’s 94 recommendations,
including provisions for health, education, justice and commemoration.
Canada cannot simply close this sordid chapter and move on. Instead, it
must enact policies and programs that would ensure aboriginal
communities have the support, tools and resources to heal and thrive.

The
grave injustices of North American residential schools and their
aftermath are clear. But seeking and speaking the truth is only the
beginning of a long process of reconciliation.

“Kill the Indian in him, and save the man,”
Richard Pratt, a U.S. Army officer who pioneered the concept of
off-reservation boarding schools opined in an oft-quoted 1892 speech. At
the time, Pratt’s goal of cultural rather than physical genocide,
though despicable, was less extreme for its time than that of others who
advocated for the outright extermination of the nation’s native people.
But, as in Canada, the U.S. schools served their intended purpose of demolishing Native American traditions and history. Thousands of children died
from abuse, neglect and malnutrition. Others were harshly punished for
residual ties to their culture or spirituality. And the schools often
pushed boys toward manual labor and girls to domestic service. As a 2009
United Nations report concluded, instead of working toward full
integration “the training prepared Native children to be assimilated into the bottom of the socio-economic ladder,” where many continue to struggle.
The historical trauma inflicted on parents can haunt subsequent generations. Researchers found stress hormone adaptations in the children of Holocaust survivors,
perhaps caused in utero, that may predispose them to ill health. And
the effect is not limited to environmental factors: it may actually be
woven into DNA. This trauma
may partly explain the social ills that continue to plague Native
communities both in the U.S. and Canada, including high rates of
addiction, mental illness, domestic and sexual violence, family
disintegration and poor physical health. Reservations in the U.S.
experience suicide epidemics,
and though the reasons are not clear, there is agreement that one of
the factors is “the legacy of federally funded boarding schools that
forcibly removed generations of Native American children from their
homes,” according to The New York Times.

Need for reparations

The U.S. has made some efforts to end its history of forced
assimilation. For example, in 1978 Congress passed the Indian Child
Welfare Act to keep Native American children with their families or
communities. But nearly 40 years later, the law has failed to meet its
mark, and Native American children are still being fostered and adopted
into communities that fail to reflect their cultural heritage.
Last
month a commission in Maine found that the state placed five times
as many Native American children in foster care as non-native children.
Maine is hardly alone: In 2013, advocates in Nebraska linked a spike in
the number of the state’s Native American children in foster care to the legacy of boarding schools. And placement of children within their communities for fostering and adoption is hampered in part by lack of appropriate homes.
That shortage, which reflects the damage inflicted by governmental
policy, reinforces the need for comprehensive reparations to heal and
rebuild damaged communities. The specifics of a reparations package must
be crafted and embraced by Native American groups. It would likely
include individual and collective restitution, restoration and truth
telling.
The grave injustices of North American residential schools and their
aftermath are clear. But seeking and speaking the truth is only the
beginning of a long process of reconciliation. Both Canada and the U.S.
must commit to atoning for the schools’ horrors by expending political
capital and economic resources to help Native communities truly recover.

Lauren Carasik is a clinical
professor of law and the director of the international human rights
clinic at the Western New England University School of Law.

SOURCE: The views expressed in this article are the author's own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera America's editorial policy.

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Indian Country is under attack. Native tribes and people are fighting hard for justice. There is need for legal assistance across Indian Country, and NARF is doing as much as we can. With your help, we have fought for 48 years and we continue to fight.

It is hard to understand the extent of the attacks on Indian Country. We are sending a short series of emails this month with a few examples of attacks that are happening across Indian Country and how we are standing firm for justice.

Today, we look at recent effort to undo laws put in place to protect Native American children and families. All children deserve to be raised by loving families and communities. In the 1970s, Congress realized that state agencies and courts were disproportionately removing American Indian and Alaska Native children from their families. Often these devastating removals were due to an inability or unwillingness to understand Native cultures, where family is defined broadly and raising children is a shared responsibility. To stop these destructive practices, Congress passed the Indian Child Welfare Act (ICWA).

After forty years, ICWA has proven to be largely successful and many states have passed their own ICWAs. This success, however, is now being challenged by large, well-financed opponents who are actively and aggressively seeking to undermine ICWA’s protections for Native children. We are seeing lawsuits across the United States that challenge ICWA’s protections. NARF is working with partners to defend the rights of Native children and families.

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Veronica, we adult adoptees are thinking of you today and every day. We will be here when you need us. Your journey in the adopted life has begun, nothing can revoke that now, the damage cannot be undone. Be courageous, you have what no adoptee before you has had; a strong group of adult adoptees who know your story, who are behind you and will always be so.

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As the single largest unregulated industry in the United States, adoption is viewed as a benevolent action that results in the formation of “forever families.” The truth is that it is a very lucrative business with a known sales pitch. With profits last estimated at over $1.44 billion dollars a year, mothers who consider adoption for their babies need to be very aware that all of this promotion clouds the facts and only though independent research can they get an accurate account of what life might be like for both them and their child after signing the adoption paperwork.

This has happened to many, many Native children! We must protect ICWA and enforce it so that it stops! Even non-Native families that are not racist cannot provide a Native child with cultural knowledge and belonging. Only their tribes can do that. #ProudtoProtectICWAhttps://t.co/oA1e5kiK4k

A4: Twenty-one states filed an amicus brief in this case in support of #ICWA. These states, which are home to over 70 percent of tribal nations, know that ICWA helps them better serve Native children and families.#ProudtoProtectICWA

TWO WORLDS Book 1 (second edition)

Two Worlds anthology (Vol. 1)

“…sometimes shocking, often an emotional read…this book is for individuals interested in the culture and history of the Native American Indian, but also on the reading lists of universities offering ethnic/culture/Native studies.”

“Well-researched and obviously a subject close to the heart of the authors/compilers, I found the extent of what can only be described as ‘child-snatching’ from the Native Americans quite staggering. It’s not something I was aware of before…”

“The individual pieces are open and honest and give a good insight into the turmoil of dislocation from family and tribe… I think it does have value and a story to tell. I was affected by the stories I read, and amazed by the facts presented…. because it is saying something new, interesting and often astonishing.”

Did you know?

Good words

I agree with you on the caring of “orphans” – true orphans, not “paper orphans” as Kathryn Joyce describes in her book, The Child Catchers. The most important thing to remember, however, is that the orphan’s original identity and family connection and heritage must remain intact and available to him or her forever. This business of adoption – and I do mean the multi-billion-dollar, unregulated business of adoption – of wiping out the child’s original identity, falsifying birth records with the adopters’ names, altering facts such as place of birth, severing familial kinship, must stop … Immediately. And the outrageous injustices foisted upon adoptees and their families for the past 100 years must be addressed and righted. We are faced today with six to seven million people who were basically legally kidnapped, sold to the highest bidder, their identities falsified, and placed in a lifelong, imposed witness protection program for which there is no legal recourse. Then told by church officials, agency and government functionaries that they have no right to know who they are, to do genealogy or learn about important family medical history, or know the identity of or associate with blood relatives. This is how the Judeo-Christian society has interpreted “caring for orphans”, for it’s own selfish interests and greed. Starting with Georgia Tann, the woman charged with kidnapping and selling 5,000 children, most of whom were given to the rich and powerful who then colluded with her to “seal” adoptions and cover their nefarious activities (see, for example, Gov. Herbert Lehman, NY, 1935).

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